The conviction of Allen Andrade in the savage beating death of a transgender woman was a milestone in the battle against hate crimes.

We hope the Weld County jury’s findings in the killing of Angie Zapata inject some urgency into the movement to expand federal hate-crime laws to include offenses based on sexual orientation.

Such legislation was approved Thursday by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee after heated debate and the defeat of more than a dozen hostile amendments.

This measure is long overdue, and we hope it continues to move forward in Congress. President Obama has promised to sign such a bill and we hope he gets the chance to do so.

The beating death of Zapata, who was born male but lived as a woman, has revived debate about the need for hate-crime laws. Some argue it unfairly creates a hierarchy of victimization. However, that argument ignores intent, which always has been a part of assessing penalties in our criminal justice system.

There is a difference between beating someone to steal their purse and pummeling them because of their sexual orientation. The latter involves a heightened level of malicious intent that is intended to inspire fear or send a message of intolerance to a community.

Andrade’s bone-chilling jailhouse statements seem to fit that bill. He said that “gay things need to die,” and that he “killed it.”

While we appreciate the complexities that can arise in attempting to assess intent, there apparently was little question in the minds of jurors, who took just two hours to convict him of first-degree murder and of a hate crime. It was the first time someone has been sent to prison for killing a transgender person under a state hate-crime law.

It’s true the murder conviction alone will put Andrade behind bars for life. However, the bias charge adds 12 years to Andrade’s sentence and could come into play if the murder charge somehow is negated on appeal.

Zapata met Andrade on a dating website and they were together 36 hours before Andrade crushed her skull with a fire extinguisher. Andrade’s lawyers had put on a “trans-panic” defense, saying Andrade’s reaction was one of horror and shock upon the sudden realization that Zapata had male genitalia.

But according to the prosecution, Andrade knew Zapata was biologically male and had attended a traffic court proceeding with Zapata in which clerks called her “Justin,” the name she was given at birth.

All violent crimes are deplorable, but crimes targeting people based on their sexual orientation have a way of rippling through communities.

Giving prosecutors additional tools to pursue those offenses would send the message that hate crimes have no place in our society.